WE ARE UKRAINIANS TOO

by Jonel Abellanosa

"What love is greater than the wholesome and heroic love of your own country? What other love? Nothing else." In this detail from a painting by Carlos "Botong" Francisco are the words of Andres Bonifacio, one of the founders of Kataas-taasan, Kagalang-galangan Katipunan ng Anak ng Bayan (KKK or Katipunan), a secret society organized in 1892 to gain independence from Spain through a revolution. Source: travels withcharie

Our ancestors knew subjugation forced

into throats where no words break, silence

sharp as bayonet, glass shards shimmered.

The noose gripping the tongue, expressions

of words deprived of sounds, fall and thud

turning choked air into death’s white light.

 

The garrote spells our history’s strangulation

in the hands of war criminals. Our heroes

and martyrs tell us we, with our rich lands

and seas, have to keep vigil how the heroic

unfolds where sunflowers are eternal as their

land. Our flag has their yellow and blue,

 

our dreams vast as their barley and wheat fields.

Ukrainians show, by their love for freedom,

they are Filipinos, too, their rights and reasons

to be free seven thousand as our islands.

They are our countrymen. Across our archipelago

bordered by disputed waters, we are also Ukrainians.    

Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Dwarf Stars and Best of the Net Awards. His poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies, including The New Verse News, The Cape Rock, Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Invisible City, The Lyric, The McNeese Review, and The Anglican Theological Review. His poetry collections include Songs from My Mind’s Tree and Multiverse (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), 50 Acrostic Poems, (Cyberwit, India), In the Donald’s Time (Poetic Justice Books and Art, Florida), and Pan’s Saxophone (Weasel Press, Texas). He is a nature lover, with three companion dogs—Yves, Donna and their lovechild Daisy.

CORN ROWS

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Cornrow Braiding Originates in Africa: Like many other “Africanisms” in the new world, knowledge of African hairstyles survived the Middle Passage. Heads were often shaved upon capture, ostensibly for sanitary reasons, but with the psychological impact of being stripped of one’s culture. Re-establishing traditional hair styles in the new world was thus an act of resistance; one that could be carried out covertly. Photo source: Yarbrough, Camille. Cornrows. (with illustrations by Carol Byard). Coward, McCann & Geoghegan 1979 via Cornrow Curves.

“Those rows in the backfield, they need more water,”
Mom whispered.
“More cow dung,” Dad claimed.
I guess he meant more carefully manicured manure.

It’s not as if I am new to this old field.
It’s not as if I am a hired hand or something.

I have planted these rows before, seen rain
change to sunshine, change to rain.
I have seen floods like tears run through
old furrows between rows, between hard dust.
I have carefully tended these corn rows before.
I have even pictured them growing firm roots.


Lind Grant-Oyeye was born in Nigeria. She has work published in several literary magazines world wide and recently won the UHRSN human rights poetry award.